Biological Warfare Targeting Agriculture
Rocco Casagrande, Director of Homeland Security Program Abt Associates, Inc
rocco_casagrande@abtassoc.com

This presention will touch on impacts of an attack, quality of disease agents and characteristics of terrorist who may attack agriculture.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Rocco Casagrande is the Director of the Homeland Security Program at Abt Associates. His projects a Abt Associates focus on bringing rigorous scientific analysis to problems of homeland defense. From Decemer 2002 to March 2003, Dr. Casagrande served as an UNMOVIC biological weapons inspector in Iraq where he obtained hands-on experience with chemical and biological agents, In Iraq, Dr. Casagrande acted as chief of the UN biological analysis laboratory. Prior to working for UNMOVIC, Dr. Casagrande led a team of biologists and engineers to testand develop real time detectors for biological agents while working as a scientist at Surface Logix, a Boston-based biotechnology firm. For the past five years, Dr. Casagrande has been studying the problem of agricultural bioterrorism. Dr. Casagrande holds a B.A. in chemistry and a B.A. in biology from Cornell University where he graduated magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in experimental biology from MIT. During his academic career, Dr. Casagrande published several articles on his novel research in molecular biology, cell biology, genetics and biochemistry.

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